January 16, 2008

Wine Pairing Story (11)

One Precious Kilogram...

Le Méridien-Montparnasse, Paris.Is there something more delicate and intensely aromatic than a truffle ? The retail price of the real thing, the "Périgord truffle" (Tuber melanosporum) is about 1000 Euro a kilogram in France, but the good restaurants can't escape it, because the cheaper Chinese varieties of truffles are so tasteless that they can't compete in terms of flavor and intensity. But you can do so much with less than a Périgord truffle that it's worth the costs. The tiny black tubercle known under the Appellation name of Black Truffle of Périgord can be found
not only in the Périgord region (in South-Western France), but also in Provence, in the Lubéron, as well as in Italy and Spain.I spent a couple of hours in the kitchens of Montparnasse 25, the one-star restaurant of the Méridien Hotel in Paris, to see how chef Christian Moine prepares 3 dishes with less than a single black truffle.The first surprise was to see for real a one-kilogram stack of these precious black truffles [picture above]. I try to visualize these dogs and pigs sniffing for the truffle's aromatic signature in the wild... There's another strange thing about the truffle, it is the aspect and patterns of its inside, that you can see on these thin slices on the left, and which evoke the human brain. Chef Moine then chooses one of them to prepare the dishes : here is a typical 5-centimeter tubercle which weighs exactly 26 grams on the kitchen's precision scale. You don't need a calculator to understand that at about 25 Euro apiece, if still an unusual treat, you can occasionally afford to cook yourself real-truffles dishes at home...

The first dish [pic above] that he prepared was an entrée. These are generous slices of bread (pain de campagne) which have been lightly grilled and spread with an excellent olive oil from Maussane in Provence. Then, in order, raw ham, the thin truffle-slices, the whole thing being spread with a hot grilled veal juice cooked with tiny pieces of truffles. He works in parallel on the different dishes, letting the frying pan alone on the gas stove and checking it from time to time, eventually adding an ingredient. When the tartines got all of their successive layers, he just covered them with another slice of bread and cut each of the resulting sandwiches in three, making the ideal size for appetizers.

Laying a Truffle Slice into the Noix

The second dish is the Noix de Saint Jacques aux truffes et sauce émulsionnée. A good-quality Noix de Saint Jacques is a hit for seafood lovers. This is a texture dish where the cooking must be very short so as to preserve the delicate, nearly crunchy texture and the shellfish aromas. Here we watch Christian Moine as he expertly prepares and slices the tiny white things, inserting a truffle slice in the middle and sprinkling them with a bit of Guérande sea salt (a pure, unbleached grey salt from the French Atlantic coast) before putting the whole thing to cook shortly in a pan. The deal is to have them lightly roasted on the outside and nearly raw in the inside, easier to visualize than to do. He serves them with an emulsion white sauce made with a spoon of clarified butter, an egg yolk, olive oil, cream, cardamon and gingember.

Slicing the Turbot

The next course is the Turbot with leeks and truffles. A kitchen staff brings the whole fresh turbot and carefully cuts the flesh to get the best pieces, which are lightly fried, then sliced again [pic above] so as to get clean immaculate blocks. The leeks are cut at the right length, 5 per turbot block, and briskly cooked ("glacés") to also keep their freshness. They are then disposed on the top of the turbot, and get a light sprinkling of black truffle chips plus a few drops of a browny caramelized sauce flavored made of cooked chicken stock with pieces of truffles. Ready to serve.

Sommelier Emmanuel Petit Pouring the Wine

Sommelier Emmanuel Petit prepared several wines to go with these dishes. He says that while the truffle here is just in the background of the dish (because it comes either as thin slices or tiny chips), it brings an accentuated terroir and underwood feel that will ask for wines a bit more powerful than for a non-truffle dish.
__The Tartines. With this rural sort of dish, he wanted to stay on the terroir side and chose a Beaujolais, also because he considers that this region has many unknown gems, like this Moulin à Vent 2002 Chateau des Jacques, Clos de la Roche, by Louis Jadot. This is a very Burgundy style of wine, with toasted notes and a very elegant and silky mouthfeel, very different from these Beaujolais Nouveau wines which are fruity and short. The underwood and spicy notes of the wine are a good mirror for these ham- and truffle tartines and contribute to the hunting meal feel.__The Noix de Saint Jacques. To go with the soft touch of the Noix, the sommelier chose a wine that could sort of awake the mouth and also has lots of structure. This Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru 2004 from Domaine Ramonet, an elegant Chardonnay, does the job. The wine is at the same time fruity and precise, all in nuance and power. This pale-yellow wine with greeninsh reflections is a long-keep wine which is already tasting very well. Toasred nose with a well-integrated wood.__The turbot. Emmanuel Petit considers the wine choice easy here : The tasty side of the fish with the mushroom notes of the truffles and the concentration in the brown sauce will ask for a very fresh wine, like this Condrieu 2005 Georges Vernay, cuvée "les Chaillées de l'Enfer". this is one of the best cuvées of Georges Vernay, a 100% Viognier a very aromatic white variety grown on the steep slopes of this Northern-Rhône appellation. This wine is perfect when young, with notes of honey, acacia, some pepper and richness with this freshness forward which underlines the dish.

Comments

Hi Bert - just please tell me that you got to taste the dishes and the wines. please. all of the wine pairings sound just perfect - i particularly love the sandwich pairing. so obvious would be to go for a red from nuits st georges or something, but a mature beaujolais - i like it. really great photos in this piece.